


Six Marks, No Mark: Observations of Elle Greenaway

by dnai



Series: Connect the Dots Verse [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Elle learning how she fits into the team, Elle profiles everyone because she wants to figure them out, Gen, Inter-team Profiling, Minus Elle & Gideon, the whole team are soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-05 12:28:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dnai/pseuds/dnai
Summary: As Elle Greenaway joins the team, she wants two things: to be on the same level as a profiler and to understand what the hell is going on with the rest of her team.Or Elle practices her profiling skills on the rest of the team and figures out that they're all soulmates.





	Six Marks, No Mark: Observations of Elle Greenaway

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion to my longer fic, Connect the Dots! It can be read as a stand alone, but if you like the soulmate dynamics, there's plenty more!  
> For anyone who came from CTD, this takes place during and around Chapter 8.

There was an unspoken agreement to not profile your teammates. Elle knew this, but she also felt like she was a world behind everyone else. If she was being honest with herself, she’d tell herself that it was true, and that it was okay, because she’d get there. 

She liked most of the team immediately, and though she didn’t know what to make of Gideon, she appreciated his dedication to his work. Morgan, JJ, and Reid were easy to get along with, Garcia was as skilled as everyone claimed, and Hotch was a brilliant leader. She didn’t know where she fit into the dynamic of the team, though, and she was confident in her abilities as everything except a profiler. So she practiced. She observed people, trying to figure out how they worked. Her main targets, however, were her team. She chose them, hoping that she’d be able to figure out where she fit into their little world of the bullpen, the jet, and the conference room. 

The few times Haley came out to a bar or a restaurant with the team, Elle could see a tension between her and Hotch, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Instead of letting this bother her, she shifted her attention to Hotch himself. 

He worked harder than the rest of them – his inflated workload came with the prestige of being Unit Chief. She started counting the nights he left before she did, and after her first month, she could still do it on one hand. She tried not to let her profiling practice bleed into her colleagues’ personal lives – she only wanted to figure them out as teammates – but she couldn’t help but wonder whether Hotch and Haley’s relationship was as perfect as they tried to make it seem.   
His suits hid any soulmarks he may have had, so Elle didn’t have much to go on when she was considering her boss’s personal life. Besides, she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t cross that line, so every time she stepped near it, she tried to focus on someone else. 

She quickly gave up on profiling Gideon. Apart from the obvious things – stress of the job, a no-nonsense attitude towards cases, or a tendency to take crimes personally – she couldn’t figure anything out about him by observation. She saw the trust the rest of the team had in him, however new it was for some of them. She saw a leader who had allowed the job to become his identity long ago. But she didn’t see anything that Gideon didn’t make glaringly obvious. But as she kept watching, she didn’t think anyone else did either.

When she looked at Morgan, she saw someone who was personally and professionally struggling to fit into a box. She noticed the way he shifted the suit jackets he wore, like he wasn’t used to it. She saw him try to force his way into conversations where he was already welcome. When she looked at Morgan, she saw someone brilliant who felt like he’d been pushed aside and used only as brute force, and she saw that he wasn’t all that upset by it. 

When Morgan was kicking down doors and tackling unsubs, he was doing something constructive – he was doing something that no one else on the team could do as well. She saw the way he lit up when Garcia sent them an address. 

She noticed how much Garcia filtered her information through Morgan and wondered if something might have been happening there. She quickly realized, though, that Garcia was not the type of woman to openly flirt with someone she had genuine romantic feelings for – she just flirted with everything that both moved and hadn’t pissed her off yet. It was a personality that matched her colorful exterior and worked well with Elle’s snarky personality. Before too long, Elle knew that Garcia wore her heart on her sleeve and didn’t hide it away like the rest of the profilers she worked with. When it came to Garcia, Elle knew exactly where she stood. It was refreshing. 

JJ was a busy woman. She hadn’t been kidding when she told Elle she was never in her office. Elle also noticed that though JJ wasn’t technically a profiler, she provided insight into many of their cases; one of their most valuable assets was JJ’s ability to predict the media’s moves and prevent them when they would hinder the case. 

Elle’s observation of JJ was that she was kind, hardworking, and welcoming to everyone. Elle didn’t wonder where she stood with JJ because she was also straightforward with people and literally communicated with them as her career. 

She didn’t really figure Reid out until they were both trapped on a train in the middle of Texas. There, she saw a highly competent agent who, when taken seriously, could do good for a lot of people. However, when she and Reid were sitting on the back of a car together, and she heard him say, “I totally saved your life,” something clicked. The way Reid looked toward the rest of the team made her wonder. 

She thought back across all the interactions she’d had with the entire team. Morgan and Garcia’s easy banter. How seamlessly Hotch worked with Reid. Morgan’s nicknames for Reid. How could this team get along that well and still be able to let her into their ranks so easily? 

“So, which one of them is your soulmate?”

Reid looked at her, obviously startled by the question. “Morgan.”

He looked away when he answered, and Elle had seen him try to evade the desperate questions of victims’ families enough times to realize when he was holding back information. 

“Don’t lie to me, Spencer.”

“I’m not lying.” He made eye contact but answered too quickly.

“Tell me the whole truth, then”

“Morgan, Garcia, Hotch, and JJ.” Reid looked at his hands. 

Elle laughed. “Not Gideon?” 

“Not Gideon. He tries to ignore it, but you know how Morgan and Garcia are.” 

“That I do. Is it just the five of you?” 

“There are two more of us, but even Garcia can’t figure it out until we meet them.”

“Is that hard?” 

“Not any harder than waiting to meet one soulmate.” 

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t know.” Elle admitted, “I don’t have a mark.”

Thinking about everything she’d seen in her first few months with the BAU, it made sense. Hotch’s relationship strain suddenly made a lot more sense with the knowledge that he had six soulmates – and that Haley wasn’t one of them. Morgan’s easygoing relationships with everyone but Gideon – why wouldn’t you get along with your soulmates? 

Elle felt a pang of jealousy. All her life, she’d known that she didn’t have a soulmate. In some ways, it was a blessing, because she didn’t have to desperately wait for the right person to magically show up. She had her choice of the people she wanted to devote her life to. But at the same time, she wondered what it would be like to have the certainty of knowing there was someone out there who would get you, who would be the person you needed them to be, who would need you as much as you needed them. 

She was jealous of Hotch, Reid, JJ, Garcia, Morgan, and whoever their two other soulmates were. How wonderful must it be to see the people you need most every day, to understand each other so completely? Both as soulmates and as teammates, because no one understood the stress that came with this job as well as the other people who were doing it.


End file.
